Battle re-enactors, movie and theatrical productions, law enforcement and military training, all require the use of machine guns to provide an accurate appearance and sound signature. To ensure safety, the machineguns used must be completely safe and unable to fire “live” ammunition. In addition to being safe, the guns must be strong enough to withstand the inevitable rough handling. In particular, during battle reenactments and training of police officers and soldiers, where the guns do not receive the careful handling present on a movie set.
Until now only two options have met this need—using real machine guns that are modified to shoot blanks, or using a gun that is too fragile for “live” ammunition. As a note, within the application the term “blanks” will refer to cartridges that make noise but do not contain a projectile.
Regarding the first option, or the use of real machine guns: in nearly every situation this option is cost-prohibitive. The regulations that control ownership of machine guns have limited the supply of machine guns, causing the remaining machine guns to be very expensive.
The registration of truly original machine guns was banned in 1968. The registration of post-1968 machine guns (i.e., copies of original machine guns) was banned in 1986. No one has been able to make a firing copy of any machine gun for thirty years. And in more than thirteen states the ownership of machine guns is completely banned.
Thus, the use of genuine guns is only an option for well-funded movies.
The second option, or the use of a fragile gun, is undesirable because the resulting gun cannot stand up to the rigors of battle reenactments or police training.
What is needed is a blank-firing device that behaves as a machine gun, but cannot fire live cartridges and cannot be modified to fire live cartridges. Moreover, the blank-firing device must look, feel, and act authentic.